


What We Do For Love

by redcursive



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Hermitcraft
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hermit!Tommy AU, Invasion, Violence, War, fic of a fic, this is a bad end offshoot of my other fic lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:08:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28625454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redcursive/pseuds/redcursive
Summary: Unlike in this AU's canon, the Dream SMP's invasion of Hermitcraft is successful, and they take Tommy back. Now the hermits are faced with the daunting task of getting him back.
Relationships: BadBoyHalo & Skeppy, Niki | Nihachu & Stressmonster, Ranboo & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Technoblade & TommyInnit, Tommyinnit & Philza, impulseSV & Tango Tek (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 392





	1. Chapter 1

An admin can’t respawn their people outside of their own server. The hermits know this, and invade the Dream SMP anyway, because risking their lives is worth getting Tommy back. With Technoblade on their side, they know the geography of the server, they know who will oppose them and what weapons they’ll have.

Their most important fighters are the elytra squad, led by Grian. Dream’s people (soldiers, don’t lie) are stuck on the ground; at best they can take potshots at the elytra squad using riptide tridents or ender pearls. 

Next is the bow squad, led by Cub. Cub’s group is to be protected by the ground squad until the bow squad can reach the strategic locations as given to them by Technoblade. In addition to sniping the enemy, Wels will shoot the hermits with arrows tipped in healing potions. Once the snipers are in place, they’ll protect the ground fighters. Led by False, the ground squad is comprised of heavy hitters and tanks, such as Doc and Iskall.

Dream’s men don’t expect an invasion of their home turf so soon after their own successful invasion of Hermitcraft; the hermits take advantage of this. Immediately upon spawning in the Dream SMP, Grian, along with Ren and Keralis, take off into the sky. Joe stands tall and takes off running, followed by a massive pack of dogs. In the distance, they spy the imposing black prison as Dream’s men gather. The battle is on.

* * *

Impulse and Tango, armed to the teeth with gear all enchanted with the Vanishing Curse, are accosted immediately after they finish escorting the sniper squad to their tower. The man that’s fighting them is absolutely vicious; the black side of his face is hard to read, but the white side of his face is visibly scrunched in anger, but more obviously fear.

“Stop fighting!” Impulse says between breaths, parrying the half-enderman’s axe. “You’re a kid, you shouldn’t have to fight. Just put down your weapons.”

Tango falters, nearly tripping over his own feet. This Ranboo guy is a kid?!

Ranboo’s eyes shutter as he frowns. “Since when do you care about how young your victim is? You stole Tommy. Even if I die, I won’t stop fighting you.”

Stricken, Impulse pulls his sword swing at the last moment, slashing Ranboo across the chest in a skin-deep laceration, instead of the killing blow it would have been. With gritted teeth, Ranboo lashes out. Impulse chokes, breathing wetly as he falls heavily to one knee.

 _“Impy!”_ Tango wails, rushing to his side.

Impulse huffs, eyes already hazy. “Sorry,” he says, “I guess I failed.”

When Impulse stills, Tango puts him down on the ground gently. He stands. Even though he’s not as tall as Ranboo, he strikes an intimidating figure with a lava bucket in each hand, ready for immolation.

“Impulse died because he pitied you,” he rasps. “I won’t be so kind.”

Ranboo unconsciously takes a step back when Tango takes a step forward. Lava flies, and Ranboo screams. He tries to teleport, but Tango grabs him by the neck and drags him back into the lava. Ranboo thrashes with weapons and bare hands alike, dealing more damage to Tango than he’d care to admit. When Ranboo finally goes quiet, Tango scoops the lava back into his bucket and lays the child soldier’s corpse out on the ground next to Impulse.

Tango breathes heavily, inhaling the thick scent of blood and charred flesh as he sits down between the two bodies. He places his head in his hands and does not weep.

* * *

Stress clutches her sword tightly, staring down the blonde woman who’s come to confront her. Her friends had been surprised (and worried, though they tried not to show it) when she’d volunteered herself to be a part of the ground fighters’ squad. _They should have known better,_ she thinks. _Like hell am I going to sit pretty in a tower somewhere, shooting people down, when one of my friends is being held hostage. Especially Tommy._

“What do you have to say for yourself?” the blonde woman says quietly as she brandishes her axe. This must be Niki, the soft woman with a spine of steel.

“My name is Stress,” she begins. She has no clue what to say, but she’ll say it regardless. “Tommy’s told me about you. He respects you.”

“So you kidnapped him?” Niki demands.

Stress blinks rapidly, taken aback. “Kidnap ‘im? Wot?!”

Niki frowns. “Dream said you people kidnapped him, and brainwashed him into liking you. That’s why we had to get him back.”

“Yeah, well Tommy told _me_ that Dream abused him and lied to him,” Stress says sardonically, “so forgive me if I call bullshit.”

Niki rears back, then raises her axe again. “How do I know you’re not a liar?”

Biting her lip, Stress thinks as fast as she can. This is big. “… Why do you trust Dream?”

“I don’t,” Niki says stonily.

“Do you trust Tommy?”

Niki snorts. “With my life, but not my items.”

“That’s fair,” Stress laughs, more out of nervousness than humor, before affecting a serious, scary look that she doesn’t feel in the slightest. “You’re trusting Dream’s word over Tommy’s. How is Tommy supposed to prove a negative? By saying that Tommy’s unstable, or compromised, or whatever, Dream has automatically invalidated Tommy’s arguments in his own defense.”

Niki’s spine straightens as she listens. “I want to believe you,” she says.

Stress shrugs. “Then believe me.” She holds out a hand to Niki, offering the proverbial olive branch.

The corners of Niki’s mouth quirk upward. “So, what’s the plan? I’ll follow your lead.”

* * *

“…So.” Dream says.

“…So.” Technoblade responds, staring him down from across the Prime Path.

“I always knew you were a filthy fucking traitor,” Dream says conversationally.

Techno shrugs. “I never pretended I wasn’t.”

Dream draws his axe; Techno uncaps a potion. The two men walk slowly toward each other, until they’re at most ten paces apart. Dream remembers the last time he was on the Prime Path, taking ten paces.

“This is for my brother, you sick son of a bitch,” Techno mutters. The two burst into action.

* * *


	2. the chapter that went missing

Not all the fights contain talking. False and Sapnap, engaging in a vicious high-speed battle, stab each other in tandem. Their bodies fall on top of each other. HBomb and Purpled both get sniped before they even get the chance to fight.

On the other hand, some fights have a little too much talking. Quackity and Keralis spend more time trading insults and temper-raising taunts than actual fighting, and given the skill of the two, the fight stretches on and on, a vicious war of attrition.

Karl, Punz, and Eret come across Iskall on their way to interfere in Quackity’s fight with Keralis. The three have Iskall on the ropes until Ren swoops in with his elytra, evening the playing field. Iskall gets his cybernetic arm ripped off by Karl as Iskall puts his sword through Eret’s neck, Karl quickly gets knocked unconscious by Ren, and Punz nearly kills Ren before getting sniped by Jevin, high up in Eret’s tower. It’s a mess, and the hermits and Dream SMP citizens alike can hardly tell what’s going on.

Some people fight fair. Doc and Jack go at it honorably, and when Jack falls upon Doc’s sword, he only regrets that he didn’t fight better.

Some people don’t fight fair. When George and Antfrost encounter Iskall, still reeling from the loss of his metal arm, they shoot him in the back before he even gets the chance to turn around. Antfrost splits off from George, headed toward Mumbo and Etho, who are setting off flying TNT duping machines. Though the two redstoners heed the warning of Ghostbur, who tells them that Antfrost is incoming, they still both perish in the fight. Mumbo dies quickly, mercifully. Etho dies messily, inflicting as much damage on Antfrost as he can before he goes.

Meanwhile, Puffy climbs a ladder. Up, up, up she goes, sneaking into the top of Eret’s tower. The TNT she sets off kills Wels and Zedaph instantly. When Cub strikes her down, injured as she already is from her own TNT, she smiles viciously. With her last breath, she speaks her final words: “Worth it.”

* * *

“You’re not an admin,” Xisuma frowns. The fox-man in front of him, Fundy, has far too many modifications to _not_ be an admin, and yet the man has no magic of his own; at least, not admin magic.

Fundy grins, baring sharp teeth. Two copies of Fundy waver into existence, one on either side and all three versions of the man clench their fists in unison, arms crackling with lightning. “Client-side plugins, homemade,” he says savagely. “Dream finally let me try them out… on you!”

He leaps at Xisuma, lightning-claws extended. Xisuma just barely dodges in him, but the sizzling electricity zaps him.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Fundy says brightly, slashing Xisuma across the visor of his helmet while he’s still stunned by Fundy’s first strike, “how am I supposed to kill someone I can’t touch? The answer: _you don’t!_ ”

Xisuma grits his teeth against the pain he knows is coming, and solidly clocks Fundy in the jaw when the fox-man gets close. The two illusionary copies of Fundy grab Xisuma and hold him back, one weighing down each arm. The electricity coursing through his veins is nigh unbearable.

The real Fundy groans, shaking his head in an attempt to disperse the mental cobwebs that have gathered, then immediately regretting that decision as the motion sends pain lancing across his face. Wary of getting too close again, he draws his netherite sword and throws it at the man.

The sword is too heavy and improperly balanced to be thrown, so his aim is off, but the blade loyally buries itself into Xisuma’s side. Xisuma screams at the pain, but his armor prevents the sword from penetrating his side totally. Enraged, the admin kicks the knee of the Fundy-copy on his right side. As the clone’s leg collapses inward, Xisuma brutally rakes the side of his foot down the Fundy-clone’s calf, finally stomping on the clone’s foot and breaking the fragile bones there.

The other clone and the original Fundy try to assault Xisuma from either side while the man is off balance, but he withdraws Fundy’s sword from his abdomen just in time to parry an axe sparking with electricity, though he does take another claw-swipe to his helmet. In quick succession, Xisuma stabs his borrowed blade so far into the Fundy-clone’s stomach that the hilt brushes across the lapels of the clone’s coat. Xisuma raises the sword high into the air, and the original Fundy stares in frozen horror as the admin hoists the clone’s impaled corpse up into the air, _still on the sword,_ with one arm. Xisuma flings the sword off to the side where it and the corpse it’s attached to splash into shallow water, face down.

Fundy feels a light breeze in his hair and warm hands on either side of his face; he trembles as he opens eyes he doesn’t remember closing. Through his opponent’s cracked visor, Fundy can just barely make out sickly glowing purple eyes.

 ** _“Rip and tear, until it is done,”_** Xisuma intones.

Fundy screams, until he doesn’t. His body joins his clone’s, face down in the water.


	3. Chapter 3

Tommy picks at a stray thread on his old coat. Cleo would pinch him for unravelling it even worse, but she isn’t here right now. Good. As much as he misses his friends and worries about their safety in the aftermath of Dream’s invasion of the Hermitcraft server, he doesn’t want them to come save him. They’ll all die.

His cell is dim and cold. Tubbo told him weeks ago that Sam was building a prison on Dream’s orders. Neither Tubbo nor Tommy could have anticipated that they’d be seeing it from the inside. Across the hall, Tubbo shivers in his sleep. Shards of glass from a shattered healing potion are still embedded into his leg– even a healing potion isn’t enough to fully fix what Dream did.

There’s no way to track time inside the prison, at least not as a prisoner. Still, Tommy knows he’s been there for a day and a half, because his prison guard is the guiltiest motherfucker alive, as he damn well should be.

“I’m sorry it had to be like this, Tommy,” Philza says, running his knuckles down the obsidian wall. He looks incredibly beaten down for someone who’s still got his freedom. “It’s for your own good, I swear. I know you think they’re your friends, but they’ve manipulated you. They took you from us, Tommy. I only want what’s best for you. I was so devastated when Dream told me you’d died…”

Phil takes a moment to choke down his remembered grief. Even if doing the right thing makes Tommy hate him, he has to do it. He refuses to lose another son.

Tommy wishes there were iron bars in between him and his father, rather than a wall of obsidian and a shut iron door. He’d spit at Philza if he could. “What, are you saying _it was meant to be,_ then? That your way’s the right way because you know more about the hermits than I do, even though I’m the one that fuckin’ lives with them?”

“Tommy–”

“I’m not fucking brainwashed! You’re the one who’s being brainwashed if you think that the hermits are doing– _evil shit_ to my mind! Why does everyone believe Dream instead of me?!”

Philza’s expression crumples. Tommy’s never seen that look on his father’s face before. Philza opens his mouth to say something, yet seems to think better of it and closes it again. Tommy considers telling the man all about how he found himself in the hermits’ care. He could tell his father, in excruciating detail, how Dream found him on his Logsted tower, high in the sky, how easy it would have been for Tommy to splat on the shore instead of landing in the water. Tommy could vividly recount to Philza the sensation of being dragged out of the water by his hair, being beaten within an inch of his life, seeing just a hint of terrified green eyes behind a cracked mask. It might break Philza, Tommy believes, to tell the man about falling through Dream’s hastily-created admin-magic portal and being so certain he was going to die.

Weaponizing his own trauma because he’s angry is beyond cruel. Even if Philza’s doing wrong by his son, he’s doing it out of love. Before meeting the hermits, Tommy would have done it, twisted that knife of regret deep into Philza’s gut, for no other reason than that if Tommy has to suffer so does someone else. 

Tommy lets the words die on his tongue. They’re not worth it. At least Philza’s trying to do the right thing.

A male shout– Sam?– echoes from far down the prison’s hall, followed by a thud and the sound of several rockets firing. Philza whips around, drawing his sword, but gets rammed into the wall by a red blur. Tommy gasps. There’s only one person he knows who can fly in tight corridors like this, only one person who spams rockets like that.

“Grian,” he breathes. The man in question raps Philza on the head, hard enough that the man goes limp. Grian checks to make sure Philza is still breathing steadily, then ties his wrists and ankles together, leaving him propped up against the wall. Grian then unlocks Tommy’s cell door, then Tubbo’s.

“H– Wha– How are you here?!” Tommy finally settles on a question.

Grian smiles, faintly but warmly nonetheless. “Did you really think we’d leave you behind, Tommy?”

Tommy lurches through the doorway into Grian’s waiting arms. He trembles, but he does not cry. He is strong. With Grian’s help, Tommy and Tubbo can escape.

_“Thank you for coming back for me.”_


	4. Chapter 4

“Niki.” Bad stares her down from across the clearing, with Skeppy at his side.

Niki starts to shrink into herself at the icy expression Bad’s making, paired with Skeppy’s distraught demeanor. Stress frowns, stepping forward to stand firmly at Niki’s side.

“Niki, why are you on _their_ side?!” Skeppy demands. Niki flinches, but stands tall.

“Dream lied to us, all of us. Tommy ran away from Dream and the hermits helped him, but the moment Dream found out he told us all that the hermits were the bad guys, so we’d do his dirty work for him.” Niki says, hoping desperately that her friends will believe her.

Bad’s nose scrunches in that way that mean’s he’s frustrated. Usually it’s cute. Now it’s menacing. “Watch what you say about my friend, Niki. I’ve known Dream for a long time.”

Niki spits, “And I’m not your friend?! If we’re the ones who saved Tommy, then why’d we put him in a prison cell?”

There’s no use, Stress realizes. Removed as she is from the situation, not knowing these people personally, she can see that nothing is going to convince Bad that he isn’t doing the right thing. One look at Skeppy’s face confirms that he’s going to follow whatever Bad says, even if Skeppy has his doubts about whether Tommy’s actually better off in the Dream SMP.

When Niki strikes a nerve within Bad, he draws his axe. Before anyone has time to react, Stress decapitates him. They’re obviously done talking.

Skeppy gasps, falling to his knees at Bad’s corpse and whimpering nonsense at the body. Niki puts her hand over her mouth, teary-eyed and more than a little sick, but resolute nonetheless. Skeppy gasps wetly, followed by Niki and then Stress when Bad’s entire body turns to dust, fluttering away in the wind only to reconstitute itself in Bad’s image, once again a living and breathing demon.

“Bad?” Skeppy whispers.

“Silly muffin,” Bad says, booping Skeppy on the nose, “I told you I’ve got infinite lives. As long as you’re alive, I can’t die.”

Handing Skeppy a gleaming netherite axe, Bad withdraws a trident from his inventory. The grassy clearing fills with tension as the sky goes dark in an appropriately cinematic rainstorm. For a moment, everything is still save for the swaying of the grass in the cool wind. Bad’s head nods ever so slightly, and the two explode into action.

Skeppy immediately goes after Niki, hefting his axe with all his might. It crashes down on Niki’s shield. Unable to block from two directions, Niki is forced to rely on Stress to cover her back when Bad loops around to flank her. The two women stand back to back, supporting each other.

Bad batters away at Stress’s shield with the prongs of his trident. In a daring move, when Bad brings the weapon down again with the intent to splinter the wood of her shield, she thrusts it into the weapon, embedding it deep into the ruined wood and giving her a chance to slash at his eyes. He stumbles back, momentarily blinded, so she takes the opportunity to press forward. Obviously, she can’t kill him– he’ll just reform, and reforming will probably heal any damage she inflicts on him. She can’t beat this man, she knows, but she doesn’t have to. All she has to do is incapacitate him, hold him off long enough for Niki to win her fight.

“Bad!” Skeppy yelps.

Bad growls. “I’m fine, focus on Niki–” Bad hisses when Stress stabs her sword through his non-dominant hand.

Skeppy peels off from Niki, swinging his weapon so quickly and ferociously that when Stress dodges, she can feel the wind from his axe whistle across her face, very nearly taking skin from the tip of her nose. Her dodge takes her into a patch of dirt made muddy by the rain. She oversteps, falling on one knee; it’s a lucky mistake, because had she not, Bad’s trident would have gone through her chest instead above her head. Behind Stress, Niki blocks the very tip of the trident, then retaliates with a perfectly executed axe crit.

She can see it in slow motion. Niki aims for Bad, but Stress’s fall pushes the two women to the side. Niki’s axe digs into the curve of Skeppy’s collarbone and the man collapses. She’s killed before, but this– this is something else. There’s far more blood than she’s used to, since she hit him almost exactly on the neck. Niki feels so far away from her own body as she watches what must certainly only be a few seconds, but feels like a lifetime: Bad’s eyes blow wide in rage, he raises his trident high, and–

His trident is in her ribcage.

Despite the overwhelming pain, she smiles. No more little miss nice girl, no more being a side character for her. She’s stood up for what she believes is right, and she’s about to die for it. She wouldn’t have it any other way.

Niki is just lucid enough to witness the way Bad pulls his hood down, water and tears and blood and ichor all streaming down his face. He turns to Skeppy, already disregarding Stress as a threat in favor of the overwhelming loss he’s just suffered.

“You muffinhead,” he says, leaning down to lay a clawed hand on Skeppy’s forehead, “I would have been fine. Why’d you have to do that?”

Skeppy’s doesn’t hear it. He’s already dead.

“Do you want me to kill her for you, Skeppy?” Bad asks mildly, voice trembling. Stress clutches her sword tighter.

Bad nods shakily. “Okay, Geppy, I’ll avenge you. It’ll be o-okay.” His voice breaks on the last word.

Niki’s vision finally goes dark to the sounds of grinding metal on metal, screams, and sobbing. Right on the edge of her hearing, as the ringing in her ears overwhelms all else, she hears Dream.

**_“Stand down!”_ **


	5. Chapter 5

Xisuma stalks through the rubble of the Dream SMP, armored boots crunching on gravel and broken glass. Fundy, as far as he knows, is still face-down in a river somewhere. As rain pours down his visor, seeps into the cracks, and sparks his electrocuted skin, Xisuma wonders what’s drawn him to water so much today; here he stands, watching the water below him churn underneath the docks and eat away at the shore. Xisuma himself stands high above it all, atop a small, jagged mountain.

He hears the tell-tale _shing_ of a riptide trident. Thank every star in the void-- if Xisuma has to deal with a channelling trident right now, after his last fight, he thinks he may just sit down and quit. Even though he can already tell who’s behind him from their warped presence alone, Xisuma turns wearily to face his next opponent.

Dream stands before him, breathing oddly in a way that indicates at least one cracked rib. His mask is shattered, and more of his face is bloody than clean. From the looks of things, Techno must have scratched him on the thin skin above his eyebrows. Xisuma knows intimately how that wound bleeds profusely, how it gets into one’s eyes and makes it impossible to see. Dream’s obviously coming down from a potion high, and his netherite chestplate is in shambles.

"So much for _'Technoblade never dies'_ , huh?" Dream says confidently. Xisuma can see right through him; despite Dream's easy smirk, he's barely able to stand.

Xisuma's long past the point of asking nicely for his opponent to surrender. He says nothing, and a purple glow oozes up from out of the ground; the stone beneath the men's feet is overlaid with a runic circle: a tell-tale sign of admin magic.

Dream's not as experienced in admin magic, but he's an excellent fighter. Instead of meeting Xisuma's magic with his own, Dream bursts forward in a bout of speed that causes his fractured ribs to shriek in protest, and knees Xisuma solidly in the solar plexus. The hermit wheezes and his runic circle falters, but he does not respond. While he pours all his being into this work of admin magic, Dream is free to ravage his physical form, already battered as it is by Fundy. Dream’s axe is long gone, as is his sword, but his fists are more than enough.

“So you’re just going to give up?!” Dream demands. “You won’t even bother to fight me head-on, you’ve got to waste all your energy on some magic attack that won’t even work? I’ll kill you before you can set it off. You’ll have died for nothing. All your people will have died for nothing.”

Again, Xisuma says nothing. Rage bubbles up from deep inside him. He allows Dream, the vile admin, to rain strike after strike upon him while Xisuma musters the power necessary for his magic attack. Fuck Dream. If Xisuma focuses enough, he can convince himself that the rain hurts worse than any pain Dream can inflict. Even as Dream claws at Xisuma’s throat, digs his fingers into already-bleeding wounds, even as Xisuma’s vision grows steadily darker, the electricity sparking through his veins keeps him wide awake. He will win this fight-- there is no “or die trying”. He will win. He will survive. He will persevere. He will...

Xisuma stumbles. The magic circle dims for a moment. How long can he keep this up?

“Just die already!” Dream growls out. “There’s nothing you can do--!”

From high in the sky, obscured by inclement weather, a red blur divebombs rapidly and throws all its weight into kicking Dream in the head. He falls like a stone, groaning. “What the fuck..?”

Grian stands proudly, elytra fluttering in the harsh wind. Behind him, Tommy launches up into the air with a riptide trident and lands at Grian’s side.

Dream’s mind is overheating. It’s firing on all cylinders and then some, trying to process and calculate everything. Tommy’s escaped from prison. He’s got a trident, but no armor-- Grian must not have had a spare set, and as it is Grian’s vulnerable because he’s wearing an elytra instead of a chestplate. Damn it, why didn’t he keep track of the sky? How many other enemies are hidden within the dark storm clouds? Can he kill Xisuma before Grian attacks? Does Grian have a weapon? He must have been the one to give Tommy the trident, but Tommy’s been away from where he belongs-- under Dream’s heel-- and Dream can’t predict whether or not Tommy will attack him.

“Hello, Dream,” Grian says mildly, breaking Dream out of his own head. It’s an almost friendly tone, but it still sounds ominous.

Dream is instantly proven right when Grian holds out his hand for Tommy to return the borrowed trident. The moment the weapon touches his fingers, he yanks Tommy in front of him, pins him in place from behind, and holds the deadly gleaming trident prongs to the teen’s neck.

“Grian, what--?!” Tommy yelps, then whimpers when Grian roughly jostles the trident.

_“No,”_ Dream breathes. His heart drops into his stomach. “Don’t you dare.”

Grian smiles. “You were right, Dream-- I never cared about Tommy. None of us did. We hermits always want what we can’t have. Diamonds are too easy for us. Netherite means nothing. We saw Tommy, and we knew he was running from the man who owned him. Now _we_ own him. And I’m the one who gets the privilege of killing him, so you can never have him!”

Dream’s face, bare as it is, is painted clear to see with fear. Horrified, he wheezes through his pain with wide eyes. He’s still on the ground.

“Do you have anything to say, Tommy?” Grian asks sweetly. “Any last words for Dream?”

Through teary eyes, Tommy looks down at Dream. He bites his lip, fists his hands in the spare fabric of his pants. “Dream...” he says hesitantly, then grins widely. _“Get fucked, green boy!”_

The purple runes at their feet flare brightly. Dream snaps his gaze to Xisuma, who has gone completely forgotten in the whirlwind of revelations. Tommy and Grian, who Dream now understands faked the whole hostage situation, both tackle him to keep him from exiting the magic circle.

Dream wakes up when he does not remember ever losing consciousness. He's still in the exact same position was was in last he remembers, so he can't have been out for long. There’s a beat-up guy in armor, a guy in a red sweater, and... _Tommy._ Oh Lord, Dream thinks, what has he done?

He looks down from the mountain and sees blood and bodies everywhere. He did this. This is his fault.

_“Stand down!”_ he yells as loud as he can. It’s not like it’ll make much of a difference; there’s not many people left alive _to_ stand down.

Grian edges closer to Dream, who still hasn’t gotten up. Dream doubts his legs will support him.

“Hey, shh, we can fix this,” Grian says.

Dream fists his hands in his hair, tears beading in the corners of his eyes. “There’s nothing left to fix! Why aren’t you killing me? Your people are dead, too!”

Xisuma flinches, but Grian’s face hardens slightly. “You’re the admin here,” Grian says, “all you have to do is bring them back.”

“But-- but they-- canon lives--”

Tommy interrupts Dream. “Canon lives?! Who was it that came up with the idea in the first place, huh? Was it you?”

Dream’s shoulders slump and he hangs his head in defeat. “...Yes.”

Grian slaps him upside the head. It’s not hard enough to do any damage, but Dream is already so wrecked that it sends his head spinning.

“Idiot,” Grian says. “It was the dreamon, not you. Nothing’s stopping you from reviving everyone.”

“They’ll just start fighting again,” Dream says, grasping at straws.

Xisuma shrugs, though it looks painful. “Then turn PvP off.”

“...They’ll kill me. I’d deserve it.”

Tommy puts his arm around Dream’s shoulder, helping him sit up all the way. This is so fucked, that the kid-- literal kid-- Dream tortured and manipulated is showing him pity.

“It wasn’t you, who did those things,” Tommy says, as though he can read Dream’s thoughts. Perhaps he can. Dream’s face is very expressive, he knows; it’s part of why he wears the mask in the first place.

“It _was,_ Tommy. You of all people should understand this, you should hate me the most! I remember everything I did to you,” Dream cuts himself off, takes a ragged breath, and continues. “I remember planning out what I did, feeling satisfied with it, the blood was on my hands.”

Tommy frowns sharply, though his arm still hasn’t left Dream’s shoulders. “So that’s it, then? You’re too much of a pussy to even try? If it’s really your fault, then you should be the one to fix your mess.”

Now that, that Dream can understand. He nods shakily, calling up an admin console. “When I’m done, put me in the prison. I don’t want to hurt anyone like this ever again.”

The two hermits look at each other unhappily over Dream and Tommy’s heads, but say nothing. They watch as all across the server, mutilated corpses dissipate into fine white pixels, and people begin to respawn. The hermits and Dream SMP citizens alike raise their weapons, but find that PvP does no damage any longer.

Dream is crying.

“Come with us,” Grian offers on a whim. Xisuma startles, but sees where Grian is going.

“Yeah, why don’t you come to Hermitcraft? You can be alone there.”

“Why can’t I be alone here?” Dream asks sullenly.

Tommy grins. “Think of it like a therapy vacation.” When the two hermits laugh, he laughs with them. “Worked for me, didn’t it?”

Holding out a hand for Dream with deceptive casualness, he waits with bated breath for Dream to take it. Dream hesitates, wondering if he should, if he deserves it.

Fuck it. He may not deserve it, but he wants it. To Hermitcraft he goes.


End file.
